A Dancing Cockatoo and How the Neuroscience of Music Went Mainstream

Claudia Dreyfus of the New York Times has a good interview with Aniruddh Patel, author of "Music, Language and the Brain." When he wrote his thesis in 1996, "A Biological Study of the Relationship Between Language and the Music," music-brain study was considered "fringy" he says. In fact, one of the pioneers of the field, Robert Zatorre, avoided using the word "music" in any of his grant applications.

Now, it's a perfectly respected field of study, which Patel attributes to imaging technology.

Because it became possible to learn how the brain was affected when people engaged in certain activities, it became acceptable to study things previously considered fringy. Today, you have the neuroscience of economics, of music, of everything.

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